TEDxYouth showcases ideas of New Mexico youth

Andre Gonzales, a senior at Centennial High School, speaks at Saturday's TEDxYouth event at the El Rey Theater in Albuquerque. Gonzales was the only speaker from Southern New Mexico to be featured at the event.(Photo: Damien Willis — Las Cruces Sun-News)Buy Photo

ALBUQUERQUE — The idea was to gather some of the greatest young minds in New Mexico together for an afternoon. At the historic El Rey Theater in downtown Albuquerque, 11 speakers and three performing acts took the stage to discuss “Ideas Worth Spreading” — the slogan of TED — at Saturday's TEDxYouth event.

“I'm just hoping not to trip on stage, to begin with,” said André Gonzales, 18, a senior at Centennial High School who spoke at the event. It was about an hour before showtime, and more than 200 attendees had begun filing into the theater, strolling in off of Central Ave. “The ideas that are being spread here are just amazing. I'm just excited to see how it all turns out. It's just been such a great environment so far.”

TED Talks

Saturday's event was organized by TEDxABQ, an independently-organized conference not directly affiliated with the TED organization. TED, which stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design,” is a global set of conferences founded in 1984. Since 2006, the series of short lectures, known as TED Talks, have been offered online. TED Talks, typically shorter than 20 minutes, are frequently shared on social media. To date, more than 1,900 TED Talks have been uploaded to TED.com.

Across the globe, independently-organized TEDx events are hosted in cities, borrowing their inspiration and format from TED, but not directly affiliated. The TEDx talk library contains more than 30,000 talks from more than 130 countries.

Saturday's TEDxYouth conference in Albuquerque was organized by TEDxABQ, which hosts about seven events each year. Other TEDxABQ conferences this year have focused on education, women's issues and sustainability. Saturday's TEDxYouth conference was held in conjunction with several other TEDxYouth conferences around the nation, coinciding with the main TEDYouth conference which occurred simultaneously at New York City's Brooklyn Museum.

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Andre Gonzales, 18, before the TEDxYouth event in Albuquerque. Gonzales spoke about overcoming his fear of failure, and the importance of resilience and persistence at Saturday's event.(Photo: Damien Willis — Las Cruces Sun-News)

Fear of failure

André's TED Talk focused on a valuable lesson he learned this year — a lesson he said he wishes he'd learned much earlier in life. At the beginning of each school year, for as long as he can remember, André has made a list of goals and plans for the next five years. That list, André said, “gave me an irrational fear of failure.”

This year, one of André's teachers gave him some advice that changed the way he sees the world. Andrew Montoya, who is the ENLACE coordinator at Centennial, told his class, “Each and every one of you will fail. It's a given fact. There's not a single person on this planet who has not failed, at one time or other. And that's OK. Because it's how you respond to these failures that determines who you are as a person.”

André told the audience that he had been terrified of failure, and that his list of goals and plans prevented him from branching out in ways that he otherwise wouldn't.

“In other words, instead of looking forward into the future, I was looking over my shoulder, into the past — to make sure that I hadn't strayed from my plan,” André told the crowd.

He went on to talk about the value of persistence and resilience, and the Millennial mindset that failure is not an option.

“If I had known that it was OK to move away from my plan, and to fail along the way, my high school career would've been completely different,” André said. “I would have lived my life, instead of living my plan.”

He advised the audience to take chances in life.

“If you trip up along the way, then congratulations. At least you know what not to do when you try again,” he said. “Because, in the end, failure is always an option.”

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(Photo: Damien Willis — Las Cruces Sun-News)

Other speakers

Saturday's lineup featured a variety of speakers, each with a message designed to inspire the audience.

Lhadze Bosiljevac is a student at the University of New Mexico. Upon graduation, she hopes to become a doctor and create a nonprofit that provides mentorship opportunities to young, minority girls interested in STEM-related fields. She spoke about the importance of providing role models for these girls.

“I feel like we could do so much better,” Bosiljevac told the Sun-News after her talk. “Many of the communities in New Mexico that aren't getting enough care are minority communities. We, as women, can motivate our communities. My vision is to get these young girls into the universities, and then return to these communities as role models. We need to provide mentorship. If a young girl wants to become a nurse, have a nurse talk to her and show her that it's possible. I wish that I had that as a child.”

Joshua Goldstein, a 13-year-old from Albuquerque's Van Buren Middle School, is the co-founder of a charity called The Goody2Shoes Project. The organization provides donated shoes, along with hygiene products and food, to Albuquerque's homeless. He encouraged young people to find a problem that ignites their passion, and to enlist a group of friends to help solve it.

“Before I started Goody2Shoes, I used to see problems in my community, but never thought that I could do anything about it,” Joshua told the Sun-News. “Now I look around, and I see problems and solutions. I've learned that I can make a difference.”

So far, Joshua's project has distributed more than 500 pairs of shoes to Albuquerque's needy.

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Marina Weber, 12, addresses an audience at the TEDxYouth conference in Albuquerque. The Santa Fe youth is a climate activist and author. Her book, "The Global Warming Express," has prompted change in her community and beyond.(Photo: Damien Willis — Las Cruces Sun-News)

Celebrating ideas

“When we began putting together this TEDxYouth event, our goal was diversity,” said Van Overton, one of the curators of Saturday's talks. “We tried to find a wide range of topics, ages and ideas. We tried to dig deep and find youth that were making a real difference in their communities, and adults who had real, tangible, workable ideas for the youth.”

More than 40 speakers applied to participate. Overton said that the theater was set up to seat an audience of 200, and it was standing-room-only.

“It went so much better than we anticipated. Speakers who we were worried about, who weren't prepared yesterday, blew our minds. I've seen the audience come out of the auditorium and surround the speakers. People are coming up to them, wanting to talk to them about their ideas,” Overton said afterwards. “That's what today's event is all about. Too often we celebrate things that shouldn't be celebrated, but these kids are coming with great ideas that are going to change the world. They deserve to feel like rock stars.”

The takeaways

André said afterward that the entire experience had been profoundly rewarding.

“I've made so many day-trips to Albuquerque in preparation for this day — I bet I've traveled 3,000 miles in the last few months,” André said. “The audience was great. It was amazing to see so many people who are interested in the youth's ideas, and to see them so enthusiastic about them."

André said his participation gave him a better idea of what is happening in the world around him.

“The 'ideas worth spreading' are the ones that, at first, may seem menial or unimportant, but still stick in your mind. This event was a great experience, and gave me a better idea of what's happening in the communities across New Mexico—and what we can do about it. You have people talking about organizing youth leadership, and people like Josh Goldstein, who started his own charity. It's amazing. And this is what we need to be talking about.”

André said he has been involved in discussions involving a possible TEDx event in Las Cruces in 2016, and that organizers have begun working on the logistics of such an event.